ART REVIEW; Images From The Other New Jersey

By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO

Published: October 17, 2004

JERSEY (NEW)'' at the Jersey City Museum includes about two-dozen works by 18 emerging and midcareer New Jersey artists who come from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Part of the yearlong ''Transcultural New Jersey'' initiative led by Rutgers University, the artworks emphasize, to quote the press release, ''the power that the question of identity continues to hold in the contemporary life of the diverse populations of New Jersey.'' Sounds like another multiculturalism show.

A nagging problem with multicultural exhibitions is that they are often oriented more toward the ethnicity, rather than merit, of participants. They also tend to give priority to works that openly portray the artist's ethnic identification, often pigeonholing them as representatives of a minority group or overstating what for many is little more than a casual affiliation. ''Jersey (New)'' avoids these pitfalls, delivering a show that is short on ideology and political correctness and long on artistic flair.

The exhibition opens with a striking painting by Sunny Kim. Living and working in North Bergen, the artist transposes old photos of herself, her Korean friends and classmates in school uniforms onto painted landscapes. The transfer of imagery from one medium to another leads to a flattening and blurring of subject matter, the final image taking on the hazy, light-infused qualities of faded memories. It also serves as a metaphor for the migratory experience, with its distortions and losses.

Chakaia Booker returns to the museum with ''Echoes in Black (Industrial Cicatrization)'' (1997), a dazzling wall sculpture-installation made up of 14 vertical modules covered in dense accumulations of cut and folded tire parts. This work was the centerpiece of Ms. Booker's midcareer retrospective at the museum earlier this year, causing me to wonder why it is back (on the same wall) so soon. Surely another African-American artist in New Jersey could have benefited from this opportunity?

Wei Dong of Hoboken makes the best of his selection with a sprawling, fantastical painting filled with an abundance of Chinese figures -- performers, workers, soldiers, mandarins and Communist Party officials interspersed with seminaked women and, yes, goats. Titled ''They Can Do Anything'' (2004), it reads like a satire of Cultural Revolution-era propaganda paintings espousing Chinese superiority. But, then again, the title and overall friskiness might also be a reference to official corruption in China.

Mr. Dong has a firm command of both Western and Chinese painting techniques -- his sense of perspective and figure drawing are near flawless. But he is also mining a now-popular vein in contemporary Chinese art, with a handful of artists producing the same kind of bawdy, quasi-historical tableaux. That's O.K , if all he is interested in is producing liquid assets (these paintings tend to sell well); but if not, the challenge for him now will be to find a way to anchor his imagery in the present.

Another attraction is the Jersey City painter Aaron Yassin's ''Pyramid of the Mind'' (2003), a colossal, kaleidoscopic pattern painting of digitally manipulated and combined photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge, the John Hancock Tower in Boston and an ordinary municipal water tower. Beautiful and serene, it toys playfully with ideas of perceptual space in ways that suggest all kinds of fabulous possibilities.

Doodlelike drawings are also in abundance here, as expected, given that they are so prevalent in the art world today. Jeffrey Gibson paints and pours acrylic paint and tinted silicon onto the walls to create three-dimensional, Day-Glo, graffitilike drawings, while Lisette Morel, also scuffing up the architecture, presents a messy pencil wall drawing. Both artworks are fun and executed with exquisite finesse.

John Jodzio, a Hoboken artist and another convert to the cult of doodle drawing, offers an amusing, cartoonlike depiction of Jersey City as a crossroads of ethnic communities. In addition to recognizable storefronts and diners are reconfigured landmarks, sombrero-wearing cactuses, a bullfight ring, cowboys and Indians, weird cat people and gangs of gun-toting thrill seekers fighting and holding up liquor stores for cash. It's a wild, giddy portrait of Jersey City life.

Filling out the show are works by another dozen artists who have varied racial and ethic backgrounds. Some, like Wei Jane Chir, make art rooted in ethnic identity, while others, like Mabel Peralta, Yoko Motomiya and Reiko Hasegawa, pursue broader themes. Together, they provide a dead-on view of the depth and sophistication of the state's multicultural talent.

''Jersey (New)'' is at the Jersey City Museum, 350 Montgomery Street, Jersey City, through Jan. 9. Information: (201)413-0303 and www.jerseycitymuseum.org.

Photos: A detail from ''Pyramid of the Mind'' by Aaron Yassin in the ''Jersey (Now)'' show.; ''Wind Flow'' by Yoko Motomiya, left, and ''Crowded Train'' by Mable Peralta, below, are at the Jersey City Museum.